Ghosts of Empire

October 3, 2011
The British Empire, the largest and most diverse the world has ever known, is among the most popular subjects of sociological and political analysis in postcolonial studies. Kwarteng, a British Conservative MP and scholar whose parents were born in Ghana before independence, attempts to provide a perspective from within the halls of power as decisions were implemented half a world away from London. Focusing on six far-flung territories—Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, and Hong Kong—this expertly researched and written book analyzes the disparate and often contradictory motivations and strategies of the Crown in relation to its possessions. The young men recruited to oversee the empire came almost exclusively from a small network of boarding schools that fed into Oxford and Cambridge, the pinnacle of a complexly layered class system, and Kwarteng explores how analogous hierarchies were exported to the colonies, often arbitrarily, as in Burma and Iraq, where the British conjured up monarchies largely out of thin air. The effects of these structures can still be seen today, but they did little to foster stability or continuity: as Kwarteng writes, in words that are sharply relevant today, “there was very often no policy coherence or strategic direction behind the imperial government as experienced in individual colonies.” Map.

November 1, 2011
Perhaps the sun has not quite set on the British Empire. That's the premise of Kwarteng's fascinating debut about the long-term and far-reaching effects of British rule. As the son of Ghanaian immigrants to London, educated at Eton and Cambridge, his views encompass the attitudes of both rulers and the ruled. He supports his statement that "instability in the world is a product of [the British Empire's] legacy of individualism and haphazard policy making" with both fact and logical hypotheses. There never was an imperial strategic plan, he writes, nor directives to those who ruled. "Encourage trade" was the only directive. There were few, if any, instances of policy reversal by London. Colonial leaders ruled as judges, lawgivers and police with no oversight. Most administrators of British colonies followed the principal of masterly inactivity. Decisions made by one colonial ruler would often be overturned by the next one. Tribal leaders, indigenous administrators and monarchs appointed by the English ruled without interference, some wisely, most autocratically to the detriment of the population. Most of these countries continue to struggle to find their own identity. Kwarteng maintains that those who served the empire were not appointed because of their class, but their education and their athletic ability. The Duke of Wellington put it best when he said, "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing field of Eton." The author insists that it wasn't a class-oriented society, but the majority of those who served in the colonies first went to one of the best public schools, preferably Eton, and subsequently studied classics at Oxford or Cambridge. The hierarchical society in the colonies was far more restrictive than any found in England, even though it too was based not on money but on education and status. Rule was serendipitous, and the locals were effectively ignored and left to their own devices—as long as they didn't interrupt trade. Kwarteng effectively illustrates the effects of empire in a forceful and thorough book that holds important lessons for today's leaders—in particular that the cost of invading and occupying a country always exceeds expectations.

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December 15, 2011
Intrigued by administrators of the British Empire, Kwarteng, a Conservative Party member of the House of Commons, looks at their rule in six former colonies: Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria, and Hong Kong. Such varied places militate against generalization; indeed, different forms of governing were applied in each place. One reason for the constitutional heterogeneity that Kwarteng details was the great latitude enjoyed by an official on the spot. Discussingthis freedom-of-action as he narrates each colony's imperial and postimperial political history, Kwarteng describes the class and educational funnels of Britain, from which a character like Lord Kitchener would emerge to dispose of the fate of Sudan. Similarly self-confident if less famous imperialists populate Kwarteng's account. They decided their assigned country's future as seemed best, frequently triggering unintended consequences that persist to the present, like the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, which originated in local British policies imposed in the 1840s. With his emphasis on individuals, Kwarteng enlivens the perennially popular topic of the British Empire and its lasting historical influence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)